THE SPIDERS. 



embrace. Into that embrace the silly butterfly will come, 

 and, when its life-blood has been sucked dry, its withered 

 corpse will fall to the ground, and the way will be open for 

 another. 



4. They are fishermen, and make nets to entrap their 

 prey. These may be subdivided into at least two classes : 

 (a) Those which hang tangled skeins of flimsy silk 

 about the corners of rooms. They are a feeble folk, long- 

 limbed and weedy, and as their webs catch more dust 

 than flies, I encourage Rama to brandish against them an 

 instrument made of fifteen feet of bamboo and a broom. 

 (b] Those which construct a regular circular net and sit in 

 the middle of it. One of these is as much superior to a 

 dozen of the last as fifty years of Europe is better than a 

 cycle of Cathay. They have made considerable progress 

 in mathematics and physics. As the sun is setting in the 

 west, the spider sits on a projecting branch of some tree 

 beside a garden pathway, and serves out a fine line, so fine 

 that it floats away on the air until it touches a leaf of a tree 

 on the other side of the path, and, being well smeared with 

 glue, sticks. Then the spider draws it tight, and, travelling 

 Blondinwise along it, pulls a thicker line across the space. 

 It is now a comparatively easy matter to stretch a second 



72 



